While the majority of the tech media seem intent this week to report Microsoft's first ever loss since joining the stock market in 1986, there's one particular piece of good news that came from the company's recent quarterly earnings report. Skype's global usage jumped by 50% in the last quarter, equalling to 115 billion minutes worth of calls on the service.

The growth in Skype alone has perhaps been accountable for most of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division's 20% increase in revenue over the last quarter. The news certainly isn't bad for Redmond, who is looking for good news that their purchase of Skype last year was the right decision. As a result, the division's revenue grew by $292 million in the last quarter of April to June.

It's certainly good news for the service, along with the announcement earlier this week that Microsoft intends to fully integrate Skype into its next array of Office 2013 products, set to be released later this year. The 'presense' feature which will be seen primarily in Outlook, allows the user to start a call with either one or many co-workers simultaneously. In other words, Skype looks set to be commonplace in almost every office environement worldwide, if Microsoft has its way.

For a while now, critics have been unsure of which direction Microsoft wanted to take the VOIP service. The news of Skype's growth and integration into other Microsoft products will certainly help to keep the doubters quiet.